Great Men as Prophets of a New Era. Newell Dwight Hillis

for their city, the magistrates of Florence forbade Savonarola's preaching, and closed the cathedral to his work.

      Retiring to St. Mark's, the great leader wrote letters to the crowned heads of Europe, and called for a general council. He reviewed the crimes of which the Pope had been guilty, and the list of vices was long and black. His letters to various princes were intercepted, and taken to Alexander. Then agents, with large sums of money, were sent to Florence to organize a movement to destroy the Prior. Every conceivable plot was organized against him, but he escaped poison, the knife, and the assassin's club. His enemies challenged him to the ordeal by fire, and when he asked that he might be allowed to carry the crucifix and the sacrament in his hand they withdrew the challenge. Thrown into prison, the inquisitors subjected him to the most cruel torture. He was drawn up to the ceiling by a rope fourteen times, and then suddenly dropped, until muscles, tendons and bones were all but torn from their sockets. He was denied food and water and sleep. And finally his reason gave way. Bodily pain so injured and inflamed the brain that it refused its action. Among his last words were the words of the dying Saviour, "In thee, O Lord, have I trusted. Let me never be confounded."

      When he was condemned to the flames, he appealed to the government of Florence, but the rulers hastened to support the papal decree, and insisted upon the execution of the sentence. On the morning upon which he was to die, the great public square in Florence was crowded with citizens. Multitudes who had wept during his sermons and whose lives had been changed by his teachings, stood in grief and trepidation around the funeral pyre, just as the multitudes in Jerusalem stood in fear about the cross of Christ. In pronouncing the sentence of death, the bishop of Verona, overwhelmed with fear and confusion, said, "I separate thee from the Church militant and the Church triumphant." To which Savonarola answered, "From the Church militant, yes, but from the Church triumphant, that is not given unto you." The soldiers pushed the lowest dregs of the city, thieves, drunkards, diseased criminals, close to his scaffold, and encouraged them to assail him with vile words and vile deeds. At ten o'clock of the 23d of May, 1498, his enemies achieved his death. Like Elijah he ascended unto heaven in a chariot of fire. But soon thereafter the guilty leaders of the Church discovered that his work had just begun. He had aroused the conscience of the people, who followed Luther in a revolt against the sale of indulgences that gave the right for the crime and sin. His assertion of personal liberty put strength into Luther's arm and faith into the heart of Calvin. Erasmus borrowed from Savonarola his teachings of reasonableness and light. In exalting the Bible as the final source of authority, he had enthroned that Book and the teachings of Jesus above all popes and cardinals and bishops. Practical men, Galileo, and Bacon, and Erasmus, and Tyndale, borrowed courage from his life and writings. And to this day the influence of this preacher, prophet, martyr, is still potent, not alone in Italy, but throughout the world.